7digital beats Amazon MP3 on quality

And on added-value features it's still the 'home of MP3'

While Amazon doesn't seem to have made much of a noise about the late arrival of its UK MP3 store to the online party, the boss of specialist online music store 7digital has hit back at the new offering.

"We'd like to congratulate Amazon UK for finally entering the MP3 market, albeit a little late," notes Ben Drury, CEO of 7digital.com, the company that dubs itself "the home of MP3".

"We announced on 16 September that we were the first in Europe to achieve this. It's great that general retailers like Amazon clearly recognise the importance of digital music for consumers and the MP3 universal music format which works on all devices.

7digital.com aims to "provide consumers with a first rate music delivery service because that's what we are and what we know."

7digital MP3's higher quality

Crucially, for those music buyers that care about quality, Drury notes that "Amazon's MP3 downloads are only 256kps quality so they are not delivering the high quality 320kps MP3s 7digital.com does."

7digital also offers music consumers a number of added-value services that non-specialists such as Amazon don't. The 7digital Locker, for example, allows you to download music again if you lose it from your iPod or hard drive. Amazon doesn't offer this type of back-up option.

Drury does agrees that "Amazon's entry into the market is good news for the digital music consumer and will help accelerate the migration from physical format to digital" and that "this is another victory for MP3 and another blow for iTunes – that doesn't offer MP3s at all."